Closing Roxham Road Won’t Stop Asylum-Seekers From Entering Canada, Trudeau Says

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks to the media in Ottawa on Feb. 12, 2023. The Canadian Press/ Patrick Doyle

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau today responded to recent calls for Ottawa to close the Roxham Road unofficial border crossing, saying that the action would not reduce the high number of asylum-seekers entering Canada.

“For years we have been focused on closing Roxham Road. The challenge is not to say ‘oh, we should close it’—the challenge is how to close it,” Trudeau said while speaking to reporters on Feb. 22 in Richmond Hill, Ontario.

Trudeau said the problem of high numbers of migrants flooding into Canada isn’t caused by Roxham Road, but by the fact that Canada has thousands of kilometres worth of “undefended, shared border with the United States.”

On Feb. 21, Quebec Premier François Legault called on Trudeau to close Roxham Road citing strains on the province amid the influx of migrants. The same day, Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre echoed the call for Ottawa to close the border crossing within 30 days.

Trudeau said today that if Roxham Road were to be closed, asylum-seekers will simply “choose to cross elsewhere.”

“The only way to effectively shut down not just Roxham Road but the entire border to these irregular crossings is to renegotiate the Safe Third Country Agreement,” Trudeau said.

First signed between Canada and the U.S. in 2002, the Safe Third Country Agreement (STCA) requires refugee claimants to request protection in the first safe country they arrive in after crossing the Canada-U.S. land border unless they qualify for an exception.

The agreement applies only to refugees claiming asylum who are seeking entry to Canada from the U.S.

Asylum seekers from Congo cross the border at Roxham Road in Quebec from Champlain, New York, on Feb. 9, 2023. The Canadian Press/Ryan Remiorz

Trudeau says the federal government has been working on a renegotiation of the STCA for “many months.”

“We’re making real progress,” he said. “But until we manage to do that, we need to continue to support our immigration system. We need to make sure that the resources are there, particularly for the province of Quebec.”

According to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, around 4,200 asylum-seekers entered Canada at unofficial entry points in 2021. That figure is far less than the 35,000 intercepted by the RCMP across Canada in 2022, the year Roxham Road reopened after pandemic border closures.

Quebec’s Minister of Immigration Christine Fréchette said on Feb. 14 that Ottawa was paying to have some of the migrants entering Quebec through Roxham Road moved to other provinces.

Fréchette said she was “very happy” with the action, but Quebec Premier François Legault is asking Trudeau to do more.

“Roxham Road will have to be closed one day or another, whether we like it or not. The sooner the better,” Legault wrote in an opinion column published in the Globe and Mail on Feb. 21.

“It is becoming increasingly difficult to receive asylum seekers with dignity,” Legault wrote, saying support services are stretched to their limits and migrants are becoming “more likely to find themselves in a situation of homelessness.”

“This situation comes at a time when, like everywhere in Canada, our public services are already strained. This additional pressure has become unsustainable and cannot continue any longer.”

Federal Immigration Minister Sean Fraser told reporters in Dartmouth, N.S., on Feb. 22 that Legault is “right to raise” concerns about Roxham Road, saying that Quebec currently faces “a disproportionate amount of pressure” on their social services, health, and education systems because of the recent influx of migrants entering Canada at Roxham Road.

The minister added that Ottawa is working on further measures to move the migrants entering Quebec to other provinces while their asylum claims process.